You say you drink a lot of water everyday, but you also notice that every time you look over at your water bottle sitting on your desk, it’s empty. And it’s noon.

In between calls, reports and running to your next appointment, you simply didn’t think about drinking water.

Do you think you could be one of the 75% of Americans who is chronically dehydrated today? How about one of the 37% of Americans who eats when they’re full, when it’s really dehydration that causes them to feel hungry?

Dehydration is no joke.

Dehydration causes fuzzy, short-term memory. Dehydration is the #1 reason for daytime fatigue. Even mild dehydration slows down your metabolism. Just a mere 2% drop in body water can trigger cognitive dysfunction.  

Maybe you’ve heard me talk about Dr. Batman, the water expert? Formally known as Dr. F. Batmanghelidj, author of “Your Body’s Many Cries For Water” discovered the curative powers of water when he was a political prisoner in Iran. He says, “You’re not sick, you are thirsty: don’t treat thirst with medications!” 

Research shows that dehydration can cause, asthma, allergies, arthritis, hypertension, depression, headaches, diabetes, obesity, MS and even premature aging.

The healing remedy is water and the awesome new and free app is Waterlogged.

Try as you might, you know you are not drinking enough water, but this app will change your water-drinking game! It provides awesome charts and reminders (this is a $3.99 upgrade and well worth the small investment) to help you track and improve your daily water intake.

Waterlogged helps you:

• Track your water consumption by the hour, day, week, or year, and see at a glance how you’re doing.
• Snap a picture and add your own glasses and water bottles. This feature makes logging your water even faster – it’s kinda’ crazy how easy and effective this app works!
• Get reminders when you need them to build a good water habit – meeting your daily quota is super easy – I have mine reminder set for every hour, and it’s made a HUGE difference = why I am blogging about this fantastic app!

Waterlogged is designed for both iPhone and iPad, has 4.5 rating on iTunes and is ranked as one of the top 3 water apps across the board – I did the research for you! 

Moreover, I LOVE it! After reviewing many apps from the top 5 list, I chose Waterlogged for it’s ranking, reviews and visual cues! After one month of using it, I heartily give you my seal of approval! It’s easy, it’s effective and as the pictures below show it’s very helpful for we visual learners!

The Buddhist monk who my Catholic priest and beloved friend Fr. Ed introduced me to, the monk known as “an apostle of peace and nonviolence,” Thich Nhat Hanh is a renowned Zen master, Vietnamese monk and poet who inspired my Faith through my journey from illness to wellness since our ‘meeting‘ in 1985. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1967, and is the author of many books, including the best-sellers Peace is Every Step and The Miracle of Mindfulness.

When I was sick, Hahn taught me that to feel my best was a holistic journey, a journey that includes healing the mind, body and Spirit, a journey far beyond just clean eating and personal development. Hahn taught me that if I breathed deeply, that if I learned to pay attention and live in the moment, to practice mindfulness and interbeingness (that we are all one), that my health problems would dissipate. He said, “Go home to yourself (Carol) and breathe in and out deeply. Get in touch with your suffering and ask yourself, “Why am I suffering? Where is it coming from?”

His words were like a balm on my weary Spirit and unhealthy body. I stopped ‘doing,’ and started practicing just being, being with whatever I was experiencing without making it right or wrong, without struggle. His directive made all the difference as I moved through perplexing times with my health.

I offer you 30 quotes and excerpts that encapsulate the quintessence of Thich Nhat Hahn that continue to bring me back to me, but for you really. I own several of his books, but maybe you don’t, and maybe you too could benefit from this beautiful teacher as you move towards greater health and vitality.

Hahn taught me that to restore my health, I had to go home to me, that they were inextricably linked to each other and that mindfulness was my ticket.

Make no mistake health and healing are a holistic journey. When we create health and healing, peace and balance within, we are able to extend health and healing, peace and balance in the world.

The quotes and excerpts from Thich Nhat Hahn:

• Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hours will bring peace, joy, and happiness to ourselves and others.

• Smile, breathe and go slowly.

• Be yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search or struggle. Just Be.

• Understanding and Love are not two separate things, but just one. To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living beings with the eyes of compassion. When you understand, you cannot help but love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the suffering of people.

• In our consciousness, there are many negative seeds and also many positive seeds. The practice is to avoid watering the negative seeds, and to identify and water the positive seeds every day.

• Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

• You are like a candle. Imagine you are sending light out all around you. All your words, thoughts and actions are going in many directions. If you say something kind, your kind words go in many directions, and you yourself go with them. We are transforming and continuing in a different form at every moment.

• Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.

• We have to walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on the Earth. Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.

• People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

• You are what you want to become. Why search anymore? You are a wonderful manifestation. The whole universe has come together to make your existence possible. There is nothing that is not you. The kingdom of God, the Pure Land, nirvana, happiness, and liberation are all you.

• Hatred and fear blind us. We no longer see each other. We only see the faces of monsters, and that gives us the courage to destroy each other.

• Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice…

• Every path, every street in the world is your walking meditation path.

• If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.

• Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.

• Walk and touch peace every moment.

Walk and touch happiness every moment.

Each step brings a fresh breeze.

Each step makes a flower bloom.

Kiss the Earth with your feet.

Bring the Earth your love and happiness.

The Earth will be safe

when we feel safe in ourselves.

• Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive—that you can touch the miracle of being alive—then that is a kind of enlightenment.

• Mindful Consuming

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being, and joy in the body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films, and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society, and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger, and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self transformation and for the transformation of society.

• We have to learn to die in every moment in order to be fully alive.

• My actions are my only true belongings.
  I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
  My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

• The way we live our daily lives is what most effects the situation of the world. If we can change our daily lives, then we can change our governments and can change the world. Our president and governments are us. They reflect our lifestyle and our way of thinking. The way we hold a cup of tea, pick up the newspaper or even use toilet paper are directly related to peace.

• The buddha called suffering a holy truth, because our suffering has the capacity of showing us the path to liberation. Embrace your suffering and let it reveal to you the way to peace.

• Continue until you see yourself in the cruelest person on Earth, in the child starving, in the political prisoner. practice until you recognize yourself in everyone in the supermarket, on the street corner, in a concentration camp, on  a leaf, in a dewdrop. Meditate until you see yourself in a speck of dust in a distant galaxy. See and listen with the whole of your being. If you are fully present, the rain of Dharma will water the deepest seeds in your store consciousness, and tomorrow, while you are washing the dishes or looking at the blue sky, that seed will spring forth, and love and understanding will appear as a beautiful flower.

• Breathing in I calm my body.  Breathing out I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment!

• We should be able to bring the practice of meditation hall into our daily lives. We need to discuss among ourselves how to do it. Do you practice breathing between phone calls? Do you practice smiling while cutting carrots? Do you practice relaxation after hard hours of work? These are practical questions. If you know how to apply meditation to dinner time, leisure time, sleeping time, it will penetrate your daily life, and it will also have a tremendous effect on social concerns.

• When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.

• Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

• Each second of life is a miracle.

• Be still and know.

• Be still and know.

To close, I include a short video with Oprah interviewing Thich Nhat Hahn to experience for yourself, this kind and generous teacher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ9UtuWfs3U

What quote speaks to you? Does 'coming home to yourself' resonate with you, for your get-healthy, healing journey? I'd love to hear how in the comments section below. 

You know the drill. You commit to exercising 5x a week and eliminating carbs from your diet to lose weight. But after a long day at work, you find yourself at happy hour eating pizza and drinking beer. Uh-oh. Oopses.

There is a better way, actually two better ways that work together. One without the other bears little fruit:

1. Drop the excuses, and,
2. Get into action

Excuses, you know, like the one you used when you decided to forgo your new weight-loss plan and go to happy hour instead.

You know, like the excuses that caused you to gain excess weight in the first place.

Excuses, justifications, reasons stop you … more often than you’d like to admit.

You’re too old. You’re too young. You’re not prepared. You’re overly qualified. You’re tired. You busy. You don’t have enough time. You’re not prepared. You’re not self-disciplined. You’re out with your friends. You’re family doesn’t eat like that. You don’t like vegetables. You deserve a treat (5 nights a week). Healthy people eat weird food. There are so many diets, I don’t know what to do …

The number one thing most dieters have in common is their lack of stick-with-it-ness, with 2 out of 5 people quitting within the first seven days!

And you unwittingly got entrenched in ways of doing things like your family, friends and community that may be thwarting you from achieving the results you most want, like losing weight and looking and feeling your best!

At the most fundamental level, you must challenge your ideas and perspectives about health and vitality, wellbeing and weight-loss versus what you learned in life, to get a closer look at the ways excuses get in your way of getting into action and achieving the results you want.

This is where you put the rubber on the road. 

This is where you create congruency between what you do and what you say.

This is where you get into action.

You’ve got no game without action, without getting on the court.

To obliterate the excuses that impede you from creating vibrant health, increased productivity and even living an extraordinary life, take time to answer these questions. Think about each one, even journal your responses out. Journaling makes way for subconscious thoughts to emerge.

1. Why do you pretend you do not know what to do? When I learned that I am 100% responsible for ever detail of my life, my life changed. There is unparalleled freedom in owning our stuff!
2. What is the root of your lack of stick-with-it-ness? We choose, even when we don’t choose. Not choosing is a choice that brings it’s own set of results.
3. Why don’t you do what you know you should be doing? Life happens in the actions you take, and the actions you don’t take. As Yoda said, “You do, and you don’t do. There is no try.”
4. What is it costing you to not achieve your health goal? There is always a cost, a price to be paid. Are you sure your happy with what you are paying for?
5. What is the benefit you are gaining by not really committing? You might be saying benefit? How could I be benefiting from holding unhealthy weight? Think about it, if you weren’t really happy with the results you have, you would change it. Identify the benefits = transformative awesomeness!
6. What do you want your life to be in five years? Visualize your life in five years from now, if you do achieve your health goals, and visualize your life five years from now if you don’t achieve your health goals. Include every detail. Include every ripple effect of every detail. They matter.
7. If you achieved your health goals how would you feel? This is so important. How would you feel?

By challenging your ideas and perspectives you create space for new actions to emerge that you might not have seen before.

If you want to lose weight, then you must give up all your go-to reasons for why you can’t commit right now and commit right now, to choose the actions that help you move the dial forward, even just one small step.

Reminds me of the time I said to my brother Danny, “Will you teach me about finance?” He said sure, “Don’t spend more than you make and save.”

Simple. Easy-peasy. Identify what excuses are working over-time in your life. Choose one action. Do it consistently. Make it a habit. And then choose another. Do it consistently and make it a habit …

I now have one rare spot in my Inner Circle Program. Let's explore whether that spot might be right for you. Email me at carol@carol-egan.com

The best time to do a detox is the time you’ll actually do it, but summertime naturally pulls us to cleansing our body because:

• Fresh, raw, light foods of the season promote efficient cleansing.
• Local produce is easily accessible, bountiful and simple to prepare.
• Warm weather and outdoor activities, like cycling, swimming and hiking increase sweating, which increases the release of toxins.

Plus, with more skin showing, and lighter clothes revealing, a summer detox is the ideal time to cleanse your body of accumulated toxins and to release unwanted weight.

My Summer Detox Cheatsheet, direct from my highly acclaimed online detox program, More Than A Detox, offers you an effective blueprint to flush toxins, eliminate cravings, reduce inflammation and belly bloat, release unwanted weight and shift your whole perception about ‘dieting’ and all that is possible simply from eating clean, whole foods.

Follow what I offer you here, and watch your health goals materialize!

You will experience, and maybe for the first time, what it feels like to be in a balanced body, simply because we remove all the common toxic trigger foods that cause inflammation and an overgrowth of yeast and mold in your body.

Your success in More Than A Detox, unlike celebrity endorsed diet programs, happens in a formula akin to a math equation, what you take in, and what you take out.

Set a start date for yourself (or join us on June 16) and then schedule out the three phases below:

Pre-Detox

The first phase is four days long and focused on eliminating the five top-common toxic trigger foods: gluten, dairy, sugar, caffeine and alcohol from your diet.This helps you prepare for the full-detox days.

Detox

The second phase is made up of seven, full-detox days. During this phase, you continue eliminating the gluten, dairy, sugar, caffeine and alcohol, PLUS you add in nutrient dense, whole foods, like my Wholly Trinity.

Post-Detox

The The last four days you begin to slowly add back in the foods you eliminated. Do note, this is the most important phase of the detox. This is the phase you literally feel if a food serves you, or not.

Across the board, 99.9% of detoxers that have gone through my program notice big things, even though they might be subtle, like a food causes bloat or constipation, incites a craving or headache.

During this post-detox phase, I recommend that you add one food back in every two days, in case you experience a delayed toxic response.

To see even better results, begin each day with the Morning Elixir to jumpstart your day, to cleanse, heal, tonify and alkalize your body.

The guiding principles of More Than A Detox are:

• Eat light, cleansing foods to support your body in releasing toxins that prematurely age you, cause cravings, fatigue, lethargy and excess weight, plus improve digestion and reduce inflammation.
• Discover what foods fuel you, and what foods deplete you.\
• Eliminate foods that cause obstruction in your body, to remove obstruction in your body. It is NOT a cleanse if you do not remove the backed up waste matter in your body!

If you implement the ideas I offer you here, you will experience what all detoxers experience — more energy, more clarity, and releasing excess weight — from all the nutrient dense juices, smoothies and clean meals, and the removal of accumulated waste matter.

You’ll be singing Dixie and experiencing all that a detox makes possible!

PS – Want to follow my Summer Detox Cheatsheet above, but know you need some accountability? Join us for More Than a Detox: Summer and get started on June 16!

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For the past 10 days I’ve gone to the gym everyday.

Going to the gym everyday, and going to classes that challenge me everyday is part of a 21-day challenge I created a few months back in the moment when I heard me putting myself second to my business, my clients and business development.

I didn’t believe I could maintain a rigorous fitness schedule while building a business.

When I heard myself say to someone, “My business comes first,” I felt a tear fill my eye.

This gaping disconnect between what I believe so fervently, that health and vitality are a holistic endeavor, that we create our best selves when we are aligned in all areas of life … and how I was living, I knew I had to recommit to my daily rituals.

I chose what Charles Duhigg describes in The Power of Habit, as a keystone habit to revitalize my daily rituals. A keystone habit is that small, seemingly benign habit, yet creates the foundation for all other habits to flourish. I chose journaling as my keystone habit, three, free-writing pages every morning for 21-days because journaling always had a way of bringing me back to me.

I began to feel so much clarity and peace of mind, creativity and groundedness from simply journaling every morning that I decided to challenge myself for 21-days with my meditation practice too, which also had become hit or miss.

Since meditation is, well, so meditative, this might sound crazy, but I began to feel on fire! Excitement and adrenaline were running through my veins … for no apparent reason!

Duhigg, says, “Habits are so powerful. They create neurological cravings.”

Indeed. I was literally getting high by simply renewing my daily commitments to me, which ironically felt really hard to do initially!

This is when my idea to create “The 21-Day Project” crystallized.

My renewed commitment to me and my daily habits hit me like a ton of bricks, like this IS the created life! This IS how I create my life by my design, by one, what-I-really-want habit at a time! I declared somewhere amidst my journaling and meditation practice that I would create a new healthy habit every 21-days for one year and added fitness as my new, next challenge.

Amidst all this, I began to think newly about my once rock-solid, and now recommitted daily rituals, and reflected on a quote by George Bernard Shaw I’ve had hanging in my home for years,

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

Creating yourself? Hmm.

In the spirit of taking control over the skills I can develop, I’m out to create the whole shape of my life, by my design, with my year-long 21-Day Project. 

What started as a challenge to get back to the gym has turned into a fun game of ‘anything’s possible,’ and I believe you too can do anything for 21 days!

The sky’s the limit, really.

Leave a comment below with your commitment for the next 21 days  — and let’s hold each other accountable!

I promise you this,  you’ll be so surprised and delighted by how quickly you create momentum!

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Deliciously Detoxifying Pesto

This pesto is so good, and so good for you … and a More Than A Detox favorite! The pumpkin seeds add a mildly cheesy flavor and the cilantro, while brightening it up, removes heavy metals = stellar bonus!

Eat with fresh veggie sticks, on top of thickly sliced heirloom tomatoes, tossed with zucchini noodles, or one of my favorites, on top of thinly sliced heirloom sweet potato chips (raw sweet potatoes sliced on a mandolin).

Ingredients

• 1 cup fresh basil
• 1 cup fresh cilantro
• 2 sun-dried tomatoes, minced
• 1 clove fresh garlic
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 avocado
• 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
• drizzle, Extra Virgin Olive Oil (optional)
• sea salt, to taste

To make:

Soak sundried tomatoes in lemon juice for 10-15 minutes. Combine the basil, cilantro, sun-dried tomatoes, lemon juice, garlic and pumpkin seeds in a food processor; pulse and process the mixture until it is finely chopped. Add avocado and process until well combined. Slowly add extra virgin olive oil in a steady drizzle to achieve desired consistency. Process until it becomes a smooth, light paste.

Season with sea salt. Cover and chill for at least 1 hour for flavors to combine. If storing overnight, cover with a thin layer of lemon juice to prevent oxidation and maintain the bright green color.

Buono Appetito! I know you will love this. Everyone does.

Let me know how you like it in the comments section below!

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Have you ever experienced a moment when you knew with all your heart that something bigger than you was guiding you?

Like that moment you looked into your newborn child’s eyes for the first time and felt your heart well up with a feeling of love you never knew before. Or like that moment you felt like Heaven was touching Earth in the sun streaming through the clouds. Or like the crocus breaking through the warming, but still cold earth.

Somewhere in between the acute anxiety that unpinned my every waking moment back in my hairdresser days, and racing home after work to get to the bathroom as-soon-as-possible because of the digestive problems that constrained my life; somewhere in between bearing the heartbreak of feeling throbbing cysts on my face as a young woman while trying to pretend it didn’t bother me, somewhere in between my late-night, comatose-like, sugar binge-eating and trying to make my life look all polished and perfect …

Spirit whispered to me. 

Surrender. Trust. There’s so much more beyond these moments.

For no good reason and no understanding of what could be possible beyond the circumstances of my life because my body was so sick, but only the pull of my faith in what I heard, I knew something more awaited me.

I knew.

I knew that a much bigger and brighter me, beyond the symptoms of a sick body flickered within.

I knew I could access this Force within me if I listened deeply. 

So I surrendered. I trusted.

And on my journey from illness to wellness, I learned that Spirit not only wants me to tell you about what I learned about healing the body, but expects me to tell you about,

• The force of Mother Nature and all she provides, and because we’ve veered so far away from her since the advent of modern society, pharmaceutical drugs and Fast-Food nation, we’re collectively getting sicker everyday with epidemic rates of chronic disease.
• How lost we’ve gotten in the world of accomplishment and doing, that we’ve forgotten who we are and the power that sources us and lives in us, that if we remembered this, we’d never eat degraded food-like substances.
• About how important it is that we reconnect with ourselves, to reconnect with our basic commonsense and goodness about nourishing our bodies in the ways that we can feel Spirit move through us.
• How chronic symptoms and chronic illness are not normal, though you think so because so many in your family suffer from the same condition.
• How healing your digestive system will change your whole life in ways you can’t imagine, because its like a blind-spot blocking your view.
• How food-like, processed substances that you think are fueling you, are actually breaking your body down and causing you to feel apathetic and resigned, with a sense of self that is so far less than who you were born to be.
• How fun life can be, when eating healthy, healing foods and removing toxic waste matter and obstruction from your body.

I was directed to share with you all that I’ve learned about healing your body, so you too can experience and express your best self and Highest Purpose.

It’s my Sacred duty. It’s why I am here. I must share.

“To those whom much is given, much is expected.” ~Anonymous

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If you're ready to explore healing and digestive health, I created a bundle of 3 Guides to help you get started healing your body, to look and feel your very best again!

I walked in 8 minutes late.

Arriving on time is a program rule.

I knew. I agreed to be on time.

I had set myself up for success — but along the way I realized I had made another choice.

For the forty-minute ride, I left 2 hours ahead, because my plan included a quick stop at Whole Foods to get some healthy food for the day.

I needed 15 minutes of my rhythm of life, amidst the three, intense, back-to-back 13-hour days of the seminar I was attending.

Oddly, my primary navigation app went down.

No worries. Turn on another.

Again, something went awry.

There I was. Lost. Two navigation systems down. No Whole Foods in sight, with another 13-hour day ahead of me … and I still wanted the healthy snacks I wanted.

There was no time to stop anywhere. Zero.

In fact, I was quickly running out of time.

But as I turned the corner, there was a Harvest COOP.

I knew I didn’t have enough time, but I chose to stop any way.

In that moment I thought how fortunate.

I felt completely justified.

But after talking to someone I knew at the seminar, and even though I was convinced that my late arrival was out of my control, it occurred to me that in the moment I chose to stop at Harvest COOP, my choice to arrive on time changed too.

As I learned eight years ago in the very seminar I was reviewing this past weekend, I always get to choose.

I get to choose promptness because I get to choose promptness, or I get to choose tardiness because I get to choose tardiness.

But often reasons, excuses and justifications turn the mighty moment of choice into a watered-down, qualified, victim-laden decision.

Choosing powerfully is the moment we move beyond reasons, excuses, justifications and story and declare with our word the life we want to live and who we want to be.

What do you choose?

If you choose eating healthy foods, you choose eating healthy foods.

If you choose eating pizza, you choose eating pizza.

Neither is wrong. They both are only a choice.

But own your choice and know that with every one you make, you create the life you are living and the results you are producing.

Are you struggling with choosing powerfully for you and your health? We should talk. Email me at carol@carol-egan.com